Epic was developing a Gears of War RTS for Kinect

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Regardless of whether you are playing a first or third-person shooter on your games console, motion controls are not the best fit. You want a physical controller in your hands and to be sitting down focused on the screen. But if like Microsoft you have a very popular franchise like Gears of War and a motion controller to sell, you’re going to want to tie the two together somehow.

It seems that’s exactly what Microsoft tried to do, and Epic Games set about creating a Gears of War title specifically for the Kinect controller. It was called Gears of War: Tactics, and it took the form of a top-down real-time strategy (RTS) game.

You may notice I said that in the past tense. That’s because the game is never set to appear as far as we know. With the Xbox 720 expected to arrive this year Epic has moved on and will be focusing on potentially a launch game for the console alongside perfecting Unreal Engine 4.

What has appeared though, is a bunch of screenshots from GoW: Tactics taken from a video of the game in an Alpha state, which accounts for the poor quality of the visuals.

As you only have access to motion controls, the gameplay focuses on drawing paths for your party to follow and issuing commands either using the on-screen interface or through gestures. You can control up to 4 characters and issue commands either to individuals or the group.

There’s clearly a reason why this game never appeared. I’m guessing its down to the quality of the experience. Combining an RTS with pure motion control is going to limit the gameplay you can achieve without implementing a number of difficult-to-navigate on-screen menus. Epic must have discovered that, and Microsoft must have agreed to bin the idea.